With over two billion images posted to social media each day (seriously!), it’s hard to stand out and get noticed; doubly hard if you’re a business seeking to increase awareness while protecting the integrity of your brand. Without a clear and consistent way of claiming ownership over published imagery, your great content is getting lost in the noise, or worse, being shared without due credit to your brand. So what is a savvy business to do? The answer is brand presentation. Repetition and consistency are the cornerstones of any successful branding efforts, and a great way to increase awareness while protecting your brand’s integrity is to present your brand with the consistent use of logos and watermarks on published content, essentially telling the world: “this is mine!”

LOGOS

According to an article on Forbes.com, consistent presentation of a brand increases revenue by 23% on average. By presenting your brand consistently, over time, consumers will internalize your brand values and be more likely to purchase– and that’s the goal, right?! A relatively easy way to present your brand is to include a logo on images published on digital and traditional media. A logo is defined by Merriam-Webster as, “an identifying symbol (as for use in advertising).” Placing an easily recognizable logo on published content is a subtle, yet powerful, way to tell consumers that the content is indeed yours–a digital signature if you will. When used repetitively and consistently, a logo increases brand awareness and consumer relatability while also protecting brand integrity.

Chances are you’ve heard of a little store named Target. You’ve probably even shopped there a few (thousand) times, spending $100 on throw pillows and funky socks when you went in for toothpaste. While their logo is obviously not the only thing responsible for the brand’s immense popularity, Target’s red and white bullseye is an excellent example of successful logo use because it is used repeatedly across all branding efforts, it is instantly attributed to Target, it
builds trust with the consistent use of colors, and it (combined with their ads) evokes a relatable, even aspirational, emotional response — happiness. Well done, Target.

WATERMARKS

Another way to present and protect your brand’s published imagery is to use a watermark in lieu of a logo. A watermark is defined as: “to mark, or impress a given design.” In advertising and marketing, a watermark is best used to promote a branded promotion. This method is particularly useful when the goal of a campaign is to increase the usage of a particular hashtag, handle, or tag line across a wide social media audience. For example, a brand that consistently uses a unique hashtag (like #LiveCanyonRanch in the image below) may want to watermark it on their published imagery in the hopes their audience shares the image and adopts the hashtag themselves, thus increasing brand awareness. Trending hashtags, anyone? Additionally, a watermarked social handle (@CanyonRanch) can provide some level of protection over a brand’s published assets.

While there is no magic formula to effortlessly increase awareness or completely safeguard the integrity of your brand, utilizing logos or watermarks on published imagery repeatedly and consistently will go a long way.